Monday, January 16, 2012

A Whole Lot

of knitting going on.

But first, I was all set to brag on how well Jesse is doing. He's starting to figure out how to ask to go outside when he needs to, you know, go. So I was going to brag about that until he pooped in my kitchen floor. Sigh, I just can't win.

Part of the problem is that Mike and Dennise have moved back in with Beverly and James. They brought their dogs with them, and Jesse is scared to death of them. I can't say as I blame him. They are not friendly dogs. They are Belgian Malinois and one of them is Jake's mother. The other is his sister.

Now, I've seen dogs that bark at you. I see that all the time, but I've never seen any that seem so vicious as these two. They don't just bark-- they snarl and growl and show their teeth. They've jumped on Rylea a couple of times already. She ain't skeered of them, though, and she'll fight back for all that they are twice as big as she is and could really mess her up if they'd a mind to. She'll still fight them. I guess it's the houn' dog in her.

In all honesty, Rylea starts it as much as Sadie and Zoe do. I can't really blame her. This has been her yard all her life, and who are these strange dogs thinking they can come in and take over?

Dogs will be dogs, but when them two started coming after me, that's when I had to call and say, "You've got to do something about these dogs." They've got a pen in the back yard, but they can't keep them inside it. I was trying to walk my dogs, and they were up on my back steps, snarling and attacking-- they chewed the end of my stick off-- and they wouldn't let me out of the house. That was just the last straw. I'm not going to be captive inside my own house by these dogs. That's when I called James and told them what the dogs were doing. I don't think they realized how vicious they were acting.

This afternoon, James took me out there and introduced me to them. We played and loved and I threw sticks for them and everything seemed fine, but when I walked Jesse later on, they were jumping and snarling at the fence as bad as before. Still, if I can get leashes on them without them ripping my arm off and take them for a couple of nice, long walks, they'll be OK. That's what they need most is exercise.

So that was my adventure for the day.

Other than that, I've been knitting away. I finished another blanket square last night.

This one is a simple garter rib. That is K2 P2 across on the first row, and knit across on the second. Repeat until it is long enough. I picked the garter rib because it doesn't pull in quite as much as plain ribbing, so it will be easier to get it to block to 6".

And I finished this charity scarf. It is Bernat Boa, and will go to a cancer center.

I was going to clean snake tanks, but when I saw I was almost to the end of the scarf, I decided to knit instead. So I finished the scarf, and started on sport weight sock number two.

I got quite a ways with it while catching up on Once Upon A Time episodes. It's a pretty interesting show, but I don't see it lasting more than a season or two. They're going to have to resolve the story sooner or later. If they drag it out too long, people will start losing interest. I know I will.

Oh, and I realized that I'd never posted a picture of sport weight sock #1, which I finished a few days ago, so here you go: